Sunday, April 05, 2015

By passing on Ramsey, EKU missed an opportunity to send a message

I’ve seen so much in 55 years of covering sports that it takes
something unusually strange to surprise me. Having said that, I admit
that I was astounded by Eastern Kentucky University’s decision to hire
Steve Lochmueller instead of Derrick Ramsey as its new athletics
director.

Derrick
Ramsey

The announcement was made over last weekend, when the commonwealth
was in the thrall of the NCAA basketball tournament. I don’t know if it
was timed that way in the hope that columnists and commentators would be
too preoccupied to give it close inspection. If so, the strategy
worked.

Yet the decision deserves close inspection because it is clear to me
that Ramsey, the first African-American quarterback in University of
Kentucky history, is eminently more qualified, which I shall discuss
momentarily.

I’ve had a good relationship with EKU going back to early 1960s, when
I was covering state colleges for the Lexington Leader and a kid my age
named Doug Whitlock was a student assistant sports information director
under Don Feltner. (Doug worked his way up the ladder at EKU and is now
the immediate past president.)

I was covering the Colonels in 1965 when Garfield Smith became their
first black varsity basketball player. I also watched African-Americans
such as Wally Chambers prosper in Coach Roy Kidd’s excellent football
program.

But I’ve also watched EKU steadily lose ground in athletics. They’ve
run through a ton of basketball coaches since the legendary Paul
McBrayer retired after the 1962 season. At best, Eastern has been little
more than a stopover for coaches such as Travis Ford, now at Oklahoma
State (but maybe not for long), and Jeff Neubauer, who announced this
week that he’s leaving for Fordham, a lateral move at best.

Considering how many African-Americans play football and basketball
at EKU’s level, it’s important that the university be known as a place
that embraces diversity and inclusion. To its credit, EKU has given an
opportunity to two black head basketball coaches – Bobby Washington and
Scott Perry – and the current women’s basketball coach is
African-American. Still, since none of the state’s D-I schools has ever
had a black athletics director, EKU missed a chance to set itself apart
and create a positive new image for itself.

Here I should mention that both Derrick and Steve are friends. I’m
closer to Derrick, having worked with him for more than a year when he
was vice-chairman of the Kentucky Commerce Cabinet, but I’ve always
liked Steve and his father Bob, an All-American for Louisville Coach
Peck Hickman in the late 1940s.

But here’s why Derrick is better qualified:

Steve Lochmueller

* Both were student-athletes at UK in the 1970s. But while Steve was a
bench-warmer on the basketball team, a guy who got to play only when
the game was hopelessly won or lose, Derrick was the fiery leader of the
1977 football team that went 11-1 and was ranked as high as No. 6 in
the nation.

* Steve does not hold a degree from EKU, but Derrick got his master’s there.

* Unsurprisingly, Steve did not play pro basketball. But Derrick
played 12 years in the National Football League and appeared in two
Super Bowls – one with the New England Patriots, another with the
Oakland Raiders. Since EKU supposedly is seriously considered a move up
to Division I in football, it would seem that Ramsey’s football
background and contacts would have been a major argument in his favor.

* I’m sure Steve had enjoyed a successful career in the
telecommunications business. But he has never worked a day in a college
athletic department. On the other hand, Derrick has made college
administration his life’s work. After working for a while in UK’s
athletics department, he served as athletics director at Kentucky State.
He’s currently athletics director at Coppin State, a D-I school in
Baltimore, where the academic improvement of student-athletes on his
watch has drawn national recognition.

* I have never heard Steve give a public speech. But even assuming
he’s pretty good, speech-making and fund-raising are almost second
nature to Ramsey. He’s as comfortable talking to a room full of white
business leaders and he is talking with inner-city parents about their
son’s future.

If memory serves, EKU has never had a black athletics director. By
hiring Ramsey, EKU would have given itself a whole new image. It would
have sent a message to the college sports world that EKU embraces
diversity and inclusion. That alone may have opened a lot of doors that
previously were closed to EKU recruiters.
So why did Lochmueller get the job instead of Ramsey?

Well, unfortunately, EKU has left itself open to charges of cronyism.
Never mind that Ramsey had the support of such people as Jim Host, the
man who literally invented modern college sports marketing. From
everything I’ve been able to learn, Lochmueller is close friends with
Craig Turner, chairman of the EKU Board of Regents. Apparently that
trumped all.

I wish Steve Lochmueller good luck in his new job. He’s a good guy
and I hope he proves to be successful. But that will not change the fact
that he was not the most qualified candidate for the job. He was just
better connected, that’s all.

As for Derrick Ramsey, he will not allow himself to be angry or
bitter because that’s not the kind of man he is. Like so many
African-Americans whose forward progress often has been stymied for all
the wrong reasons, he will continue to make a significant impact on the
lives of the student-athletes at Coppin State.

But sometimes it must be difficult for him to sell his kids on the
idea that equal opportunity is not just a myth; that if they work hard
and keep their noses clean and do the right things, the world will rush
to embrace them. For African-Americans, in far too many cases, that’s
still just a dream.

Billy Reed is a member of the U.S. Basketball Writers Hall of
Fame, the Kentucky Journalism Hall of Fame, the Kentucky Athletic Hall
of Fame and the Transylvania University Hall of Fame. He has been named
Kentucky Sports Writer of the Year eight times and has won the Eclipse
Award twice. Reed has written about a multitude of sports events for
over four decades, but he is perhaps one of media’s most knowledgeable
writers on the Kentucky Derby.

1 comment:

Anonymous
said...

As I said earlier, I expect some more hires in EKU athletic administration to cover for the short comings in a guy who has never been a post secondary athletic director or held any university position for that matter. Could have just as easily have hired him for facilities, campus safety or accounting leadership based upon the apparent alignment between his qualifications and the position skill sets.

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